One of the advantages of having a grantmaking program within an operating foundation like the Getty is that we can be more flexible and spontaneous while drawing on our many resources all at once. We can blend our ability to make grants with the sharing of staff expertise. One of the first things we did after Katrina was to reach out to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and support its efforts to send a team of architects, conservators, and engineers to New Orleans to assess the damage in many of the city's historic neighborhoods. After a disaster of that magnitude, the tendency is to just clear away the debris as quickly as possible. The goal of our partnership with the National Trust, however, was to try to prevent the destruction of historic buildings before an assessment had been made about what could be saved. That was the first grant we made in New Orleans.

Next, under the leadership of Joan Weinstein, associate director of the foundation, we sent a team of Getty staff members from our various programs with expertise in conservation, grantmaking, architecture, and collections management to assess the ways in which we might make a difference in the city's recovery. That led us, in turn, to create a special fund — the Fund for New Orleans — that would provide two types of grants. We offered conservation grants for collections, historic houses, and buildings, and, perhaps more significantly, transition and planning grants for arts organizations that were going to have to rebuild their operations in a totally changed context. All these organizations were facing a situation in which, even if they rebuilt their buildings and conserved their collections, they would be operating in a very different city than the one that existed before Katrina. It was clear that they needed help planning for this new reality — help in planning operations, determining how to work more collaboratively with other organizations, and so on. And the organizations' staff members needed to do all this while simultaneously trying to get their own lives back in order, since many had lost people close to them, homes, and even their neighborhoods.

That's where the Getty Leadership Institute, which is part of the foundation, came in. We provided a two-day workshop for New Orleans organizations focused on transition issues and strategic planning. In the larger scheme of things, even though the Getty's efforts were relatively modest compared to something like the cost of rebuilding the levees, at the time ours was the largest private fund for the city's arts community. And people in New Orleans have emphasized how meaningful that was, both in terms of the actual support it provided as well as simply knowing that people outside the city cared. What we are hearing now is that, as a result of the Getty's and other national funders' involvement, the visual arts organizations in New Orleans are now playing a leading role in revitalizing the city.

PND: Will you continue to make grants in New Orleans?

DM: We've distributed almost all of the $2 million from the Fund for New Orleans. As you probably know, the fund was an extra expenditure that the Getty board authorized outside our regular grantmaking program — something that very rarely happens. But we will be assessing the results of those grants, and we hope to fund other projects in New Orleans through our ongoing grant activities.

PND: What did your experience in New Orleans teach you about grantmaking in a post-disaster environment?

DM: Our work in New Orleans was unusual in that we do not ordinarily provide disaster funding. Given the magnitude of the destruction and the importance of New Orleans' heritage, we made an exception in this instance. And one of the lessons we learned is that the kind of collaborations that have arisen in response to Katrina may be applicable in other situations. For example, if arts organizations can find ways to collaborate, share resources, and link back-of-the-house operations in a post-disaster situation, why can't they do the same in other situations? We like to think that they can, and that programs like our New Orleans initiative may have created models from which other organizations in other places can benefit. We'll see.

In many ways, the New Orleans initiative is not that different from what we do to develop meaningful grant initiatives in other areas. The main difference in a disaster situation is that you have to move through the process very quickly. For example, for our recently concluded Campus Heritage grant initiative, we had to find a strategic way for our grants to have an impact despite the enormous costs of historic preservation. We did that by focusing on American universities with a number of highly significant historic structures and landscapes, and with a commitment to campus-wide preservation. We also decided to restrict our funding to the planning phase — that is, the preliminary analysis and recommendations that provide the roadmap for future conservation work but which is rarely supported by funders. We also concentrated on supporting projects with the potential to serve as models for other universities. Early indications suggest that by targeting our funding on a specific set of problems faced by a representative group of universities, our grants may have a significant impact on the broader fields of campus planning and preservation.

PND: Increasingly, we see museum directors at high-profile institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art commanding top salaries, suggesting, among other things, that individuals with the skills to run an institution like the Met are in demand as never before. Is that the case? And what skills will the museum leaders of tomorrow need in order to be successful?

DM: As you probably know, the Getty Leadership Institute works to develop future leaders in the arts and to strengthen leaders who are already working in the field. For twenty-five years, the institute's flagship program has been the Museum Leadership Institute, a summer program for senior museum executives, including directors, deputy directors, curators, and other department heads. Over the past few years, the Leadership Institute has been expanding and creating new, more concentrated programs. For instance, I recently attended a new five-day program called "Taking the Helm: First Months as a Museum CEO." It focuses on the brief honeymoon period that most new museum CEOs can expect these days, as well as what a leader can do in a short period of time to establish him or herself and promote his or her vision to the staff and board.

I think most of us seek administrative jobs in cultural organizations because we love the subject matter; we love art. Many museum directors are there because of their art historical and collections expertise. But if you excel in museum work, before you know it you may find yourself working your way up the organizational hierarchy. And if you're very talented, one day you may find yourself in charge of a complex organization. What the Leadership Institute tries to do is to help strengthen museum leaders' leadership and management skills in a range of areas, whether it's communication, marketing, or strategic planning.

PND: What's the biggest change for leaders moving from the programmatic side to the management side?

DM: All of a sudden you're responsible for everything. For a new leader, it's probably the first time he or she has ever reported directly to a board. So, instead of having one boss, you now have forty. How do you best navigate that? How do you work effectively within that very different context? It takes a lot of skill and experience — things a new leader often doesn't possess. In addition, leaders have to deal with the same set of issues that, increasingly, everyone else in the nonprofit world has to deal with, including issues of accountability, governance, and transparency.

PND: Given the shift to digital formats and platforms in all areas of art production, is the idea of art itself changing?

DM: There's no question that digital technologies are having an impact on arts institutions and art production. To help museums, we recently released a report, L.A. Art Online: Learning from the Getty's Electronic Cataloguing Initiative, based on a six-year grant designed to help collecting institutions in Los Angeles make their collections available online. One of the main lessons we learned from the initiative was that this effort is much more than a project; it's a new way of doing business that can impact nearly every aspect of museum operations.

PND: In terms of audience development, what is your most significant growth opportunity right now? What about your international audiences?

DM: For most of the foundation's activities, our primary audience tends to be professional, even though the ultimate beneficiary is the public. If we decide to fund a cataloging or conservation project, it's because the results of those projects will eventually be available to the public. For example, two of our research grants have resulted in recent exhibitions. One is the large Latin American colonial art exhibition that was originated at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year then traveled to Mexico City before coming to Los Angeles. It was a huge, beautiful survey of art from all over Latin America, starting with the age of Columbus and going right up to the beginning of the 19th century. And there was an exhibition at the Met which grew out of a grant we gave to support its archives of rare photographs from Oceania that led to a small exhibition that pairs up 19th- and 20th-century photographs from the Met's archive with actual objects that are now in various museum collections. It's a terrific exhibition, and, again, it grew out of a "back-of-the-house" research grant.

The Getty was established with both local and international audiences in mind, and we make grants abroad as well as here in Los Angeles. We have always had a special relationship with our home city, even as we help institutions and individuals all over the world. The challenge is to find the right balance and focus among the many opportunities presented to us. To that end, we are currently reassessing our grant priorities as part of a Getty-wide strategic planning process.

PND: Do people today look at art differently than they used to?

DM: I think the viewing public is generous in what it is willing to look at and consider as art. Similarly, at the foundation, we are interested in art in all its dimensions, and that means from all time periods and places. The other Getty programs share a broad and inclusive approach to the visual arts. In the foundation world, although a number of foundations fund the arts generally, there are very few that support art history and conservation, and the Getty is the only one to do so on a fully international basis.

PND: Do you think more foundations will become interested in art conservation?

DM: I would encourage it. And I'd be happy to talk to anyone who is interested!

PND: Well, that's a wonderful note to end on. Thanks again for your time, Deborah.

DM: Thank you.

Emily Robbins, PND's managing editor, spoke with Deborah Marrow last fall. For more information on the Newsmakers series, contact Mitch Nauffts, PND's editorial director, at mfn@foundationcenter.org.